Both Sides Bend Campaign Money Rules Too Far

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WASHINGTON — A friend recently observed that it is quite a shame that politicians, caught taking campaign dollars from questionable sources, respond by giving the money back.

''Why give it back?'' my friend observed. ''After all, there are so many fine charities that could use it more.''

I thought he had a point. That was before I had heard about some of the charities with which U.S. House of Representatives Speaker Newt Gingrich has been involved.

One that caught my eye is the Abraham Lincoln Opportunity Foundation, a tax-exempt organization that describes itself as dedicated to helping inner-city youths.

A two-year House ethics committee investigation has found that, in 1990, the Lincoln Foundation began paying for television broadcasts. The purposes of these broadcasts was ostensibly educational. But GOPAC, Gingrich's conservative political-action organization, described the broadcasts as intended to bring voters into the Republican Party.

That's ''taking money from children'' for political purposes, according to Gingrich's most outspoken tormentor, House Democratic Whip David Bonior.

It is also a possible violation of tax laws that disallow tax-exempt funds for political purposes.

That's only one of several no-no's the House ethics committee found Gingrich had violated in financing and broadcasting a college course he taught in Georgia. The committee also found that Gingrich had falsely told the committee he did not use donations to GOPAC to finance the course.

After the committee issued its report, Gingrich, a Georgia Republican, admitted he broke House rules with false testimony. He also said that his misstatements were not intentional. He blamed failure to seek proper legal counsel. ''I was overconfident and, in some ways, naive,'' he said in a prepared statement.

Lack of intent to mislead is getting to be a familiar litany for Gingrich. He has been cited by the House ethics committee seven times for various violations of House rules. No other representative has been cited more than twice.

Yet, if anyone can sympathize with Gingrich, it is President Clinton. It appears he, too, was overconfident and naive, at best, when he and his aides decided last spring to raise a record-high campaign war chest - the better to scare away any potential primary-election rivals.

That tactic apparently worked, because no rivals appeared. But it also has backfired, as the Democratic Party has had to return more than a million dollars in contributions because their sources turned out to be foreigners, which is not legal. Like Gingrich, party officials now admit they made serious mistakes, beginning as early as 1994 when they disbanded a unit that had previously screened contributors.

Whether Clinton, Gingrich or their supporters are guilty of violating tax laws or not, their practices contradict their promises to be paragons of high ethical standards. Clinton promised in 1992 to have the most ethical administration ever. Instead, his re-election practices appear to be the least ethical since Richard Nixon's Watergate scandal.

After a Gingrich crusade forced speaker Jim Wright, D-Texas, to resign in 1989 after being charged with skirting rules on speaking fees and book sales, Gingrich also vowed high ethical standards. Instead Gingrich is growing quite an impressive list of allegations of his own.

Campaign-finance scandals are not rooted in money. They are rooted in the absence of money and the hunger to get it, in an age in which campaign costs - especially television advertising - skyrocket.

Members of the Senate have to raise the equivalent of about $10,000 a day and House members about $2,000 a day just to get re-elected. That's a lot of money, not including outside-movement activism, like Gingrich's GOPAC. The more time politicians spend raising money, the less time they have to consider issues and make choices based on principle.

With both major parties busily looking for loopholes, one wonders whether any new campaign-finance reforms are going to work, especially now that the Supreme Court has ruled that political money is about the same as political speech and cannot be limited very much.

A constitutional amendment could change that, and reformers in both parties support the idea. I hesitate to open that can of worms. Once Congress starts tampering with the First Amendment, now so bracingly exquisite in its simplicity, I fear what they will come up with next.

Yet, like many other Americans', my disgust with the rule-bending in both parties has about reached its limits. Money, like speech, can be used or abused. When abuse exceeds tolerable levels, the public moves in with limits. Thus we have laws against obscenity, child pornography and, within narrow limits, hate speech. Perhaps political contributions need to be held to the same standards.

To paraphrase Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart's sentiments on pornography, I can't define obscene amounts of campaign dollars, but I know them when I see them.